How China is winning the soft power battle across East Asia.

With the United States preoccupied by war and nuclear threats in the Middle East and an array of problems elsewhere, a quiet revolution is underway in East Asia as the region adjusts to the reemergence of a great power: China.

The changes underway signal nothing less than the political equivalent of shifting tectonic plates that, over time, will produce a region far more integrated within itself, far more closely connected with China, and--virtually by definition--more distanced from America. Some say that the way events are headed, Beijing will eventually develop a position of dominance with the countries of Southeast Asia similar to the U.S. relationship with Latin American states--a first among equals, the nation whose voice invariably carries the day as much due to its disproportionate size as the validity of its argument.